The house was structured by the youthful English planner William Jay (1792-1837), one of the first expertly prepared engineers rehearsing in the United States. The exquisite living arrangement was worked from 1816-1819 for cotton dealer and investor Richard Richardson and his significant other Francis Bolton. Mr. Richardson's brother by marriage was hitched to Ann Jay, the engineer's sister.
Three years after the house's finish, Richardson endured money related misfortunes and sold his home, which later went under ownership of the Bank of the United States. For a long time, Mrs. Mary Maxwell ran a rich housing house in the structure. Progressive War legend Marquis de Lafayette was a visitor of the city in 1825 and remained at the home. On March 19, he is accepted to have tended to a crowd of excited Savannahians from the irregular cast-iron veranda on the south veneer.
In 1830, grower, congressman, legal advisor, and city hall leader of Savannah, George Welshman Owens, bought the property for $10,000. It stayed in the Owens family until 1951 when Miss Margaret Thomas, George Owens' granddaughter, handed down it to the Telfair Museum of Art.
A National Historic Landmark, the stately previous living arrangement is presently a notable house exhibition hall. It flaunts an enhancing expressions assortment involved essentially of Owens family decorations, alongside American and European articles dating from 1750-1830. The site likewise incorporates an excellent English-roused parterre garden and a unique carriage house-which contains one of the soonest flawless urban slave quarters in the South.
